# For example, if you see {{ic|Pastebin Clients (Edit) →‎ Common Applications →‎ List of applications}}, it means [[Pastebin Clients]] redirects to [[Common Applications]], and [[Common Applications]] redirects to [[List of applications]]. Therefore, [[Pastebin Clients]] is a double redirect.

# Enter an edit summary such as {{ic|Fixed double redirect}} and save.

== Creating ==

== Creating ==

Revision as of 01:52, 20 December 2014

zh-CN:ArchWiki:Contributing
ArchWiki strives to be a clear, comprehensive and professional model of documentation. In order to reach that goal we have to organize the job in a rational and functional way: this article tries to explain schematically what are the most important tasks you can give your help to accomplish.

This is a community effort, but if you take on the task seriously, a formal position as a wiki maintainer may be in order.

All wiki contributors must assume and expect that other users will check their edits sooner or later, and respect their right to do so by making it as quick and easy as possible by following these recommendations. Those familiar with collaborative software projects will easily understand the analogy between wiki edit summaries and git commit messages, and between wiki edit diffs and git diffs.

Warning: Any edits to articles that do not respect these fundamental rules, and as such cannot be comprehended with reasonable effort, may be completely reverted without any other warnings, especially when affecting popular articles.

Always properly use the edit summary

The edit summary is the little text box that is found below the main editing area and just above the "Save page" button. It is very important to always write, in a succinct way, what has been done and why. Note that internal wiki links do work in edit summaries, so use them to link to any related discussions or articles; similarly, paste any urls to relevant edit diffs or external resources, such as forum threads or mailing lists.

Only in case of minor edits, e.g. grammar or orthography corrections or the simple rewording of a sentence, the "why" part can be omitted; analogously, starting a new discussion or replying to an existing one does not require to restate the message in the edit summary.

Tip:

Take a look at the edit summaries in the Recent Changes to get an idea of what you should write in your summary, but be warned that, unfortunately, not all users respect these guidelines.

To receive a warning when leaving a blank edit summary, check "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" in Special:Preferences.

Do not make complex edits at once

If you want to make an extensive change to a page, be it a normal article or a discussion page, always split your work in several simple edits, for example according to the various logical steps needed to complete it. If in doubt, preview the resulting diff with the "Show changes" button and wonder if another user would be able to understand it, also considering the edit summary as explained above. Some common operations that generate confusing diffs are:

Moving a section in an article and at the same time editing its content. Solution: move the section unchanged, save, and change its content in a following edit.

Reordering several sections of an article at the same time. Solution: move only one section per edit.

Announce massive edits in a talk page

If you want to radically restructure or rewrite an article or a group of articles, announce and explain your intention in an appropriate talk page first, giving any other interested users some reasonable time to reply and share their view.

Prerequisites

Here is a list of pages contain information needed for contributing.

Help:Article naming guidelines discusses effective article naming strategies and considerations to ensure readability and improve navigation of the wiki. Read it before creating any new page.

Help:Editing outlines both widely-known MediaWiki markup and ArchWiki-specific guidelines. A must-read for any would-be contributors.

Update the FAQ with relevant questions from the forum and remove obsolete questions.

Non-Arch users

Non-Arch users are welcome to contribute; in fact anyone can register an account. They should, however, be confident that any edits also apply to Arch, avoiding comments specific to other distributions. For example, a Fedora user contributing to the systemd page would be fine, but mentioning that the newly added content works on Fedora would be edited out as irrelevant.

Maintenance

Add some articles to your watchlist and protect them against counter-productive edits.

Participate in discussions in the various talk pages: most users will be interested in following the most recent posts to generic discussions at this link. Maintenance-specific posts are instead listed in [1], [2], [3] and [4]; furthermore, ArchWiki:Requests is used as a talk page despite its namespace.

Organizing

Sorting, categorizing, and moving articles around has become a major task for all wiki maintainers implementing and improving the category tree.

Translating

Add or improve translations; ensure that translations are in sync with each other. Some languages have started collaboration projects (see list below) to efficiently organize the translation of the articles. Please consider joining your language's Translation Team or at least informing it when you are starting translating an article.

Back-end maintenance

Complaining

If you have any generic negative remarks or complaints about how the wiki is moderated or administered, please leave a message in ArchWiki talk:Administrators. Of course it should not be necessary to state that it is indeed possible to complain about something using a civil and respectful tone :) For complaints regarding specific edits or articles, please use a more appropriate talk page.